About Me
As I mentioned before on the home page, it was working with children that inspired me to start writing and illustrating picture books. In my early teens, I always had an keen interest in photography. I started off with one of those 110 cameras, slowly over the years progressing on to 35mm film and now of course the modern day DSLR. The careers sessions we had at school would always seem to encourage the girls to go down the Secretarial or Window Dressing route, so not very helpful at all really.
I liked to draw, so I decided to further my education doing Art and Design. To cut a long story short, 2 years later I got a job from this which involved not just drawing, but also photography, perfect !
It wasn't until years later and after having my children, that my career took a different direction. I think you need a lot of patience to work with kids and I definitely had that, so I began working part time with the Pre-School age group and still do now. As you can well imagine, I have read a lot of stories over the years to not just my own children, but to those at school. This made me think, how fun it would be to make up my own story. I could do it, I thought, as I have always shown a good imagination.
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When writing stories, the first thing you tend to think is, what is it going to be about? Well that was simple, I'm a keen photographer, so it's got to be about a camera. I knew how much the kids at school loved rhyming stories, so it was important to me to make my story rhyme. I then needed to think about the characters, and Billy (named after my dad) would be a perfect main character. It didn't really take me long to write the story as it included a lot of rhyme and repetition. This is great for helping children learn and pick up the story and words quickly. Because I can draw, I decided to have a go at doing the illustrations myself. So that was it, 'Billy's New Camera' was complete, but what happens next?
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I decided to go down the Self-Publishing route and I chose Matador, because they come highly recommended by the Children's Writers and Artists Yearbook. I cannot praise them enough as they turned my story and artwork into a professional looking picture book. My second story 'Billy's Submarine Adventure' followed on from this a year later and I am currently working on my 3rd book.
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As I enjoy reading my stories to the children, I do spend any free time I have visiting schools in the Sheffield, South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire area. My visit goes as follows :- I read my stories, introduce the children to the characters (story props) and talk about how the books are made. Not all young children realise just how a storybook is created, so it's nice to be able to show them the original drawings and paintings in my sketchbook. My visits have always been a huge success, so if you teach or work in Early Years and would like to contact me for more information, please do so through my contact page.
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I will continue to work on my 'Billy' series, but I am also working on new totally different stories, involving different characters. I'm not sure yet if I would want to illustrate all my stories. It all comes down to time really and I don't seem to have too much of that lately! But to end on a positive note, it has been great fun and who would have thought all these years later, my love of art, design and photography would all play a big part in me now being a published Author and Illustrator.
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